Twenty five years ago, the 1992 Chargers entered the month of October completely and utterly doomed.

Coming off a 4-12 campaign the year before — and a 6-10 season the year before that — the Chargers and their new coach, Bobby Ross, lost four straight games to start the season. They’d turned the ball over 11 times, scored just 19 total points, and had just been blown out, 27-0, by the Oilers. Things weren’t exactly looking up.

Then, in one of the most remarkable turns in NFL history, the Chargers won 11 of their remaining 12 games. They even beat the Chiefs in the Wild Card round, before falling to Dan Marino and the Dolphins a week later. This turnaround wasn’t just rare. It was miraculous. To this day, no other NFL team has made the playoffs after an 0-4 start. Only one team, the 2004 Bills, even managed to reach the nine-win mark.

By all accounts, 0-4 is an abyss of hopelessness in the NFL. No one comes back from it.

Unless, apparently, you’re the Chargers.

A quarter-century after Ross led the San Diego iteration back from the dead, the 2017 Los Angeles Chargers are within striking distance of the same miraculous feat. They opened this season with four straight losses and have since rattled off four wins in six weeks. One of their losses, to the Jaguars, would have been a win, if not for their propensity for choking in late-game situations. The other, to the Patriots, is the only game over the past month New England hasn’t won by more than two touchdowns.

But while the Chargers are playing much better than during the season’s first month, they haven’t played close to their potential, especially on offense. Philip Rivers’ completion percentage is at its lowest point since 2007, his second season in the league. Melvin Gordon is averaging fewer than four yards per carry. The offensive line has been average, at best.

And yet, the Chargers have stayed afloat, while — and here’s the most important part — the rest of the AFC West is going down like the post-iceberg Titanic.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Before the season, the NFL world was in full agreement that the AFC West was supposed to be football’s best division. The Chiefs, Raiders, and Broncos were all supposed Super Bowl contenders.

Instead, two of those franchises have already begun to implode. This week, the Broncos, once the favorite to win this division, fired their offensive coordinator, former Chargers head coach Mike McCoy. They’re now moving onto their third starting quarterback of the season, Paxton Lynch, while their once-vaunted defense appears to be taking giant steps backward.

The Raiders, meanwhile, are an even bigger disappointment. Among the league’s most disappointing teams, with perhaps the league’s worst defense, Oakland rightfully fired its defensive coordinator, former UCLA and NFL linebacker Ken Norton Jr., this week. Its collection of offensive talent has also taken a step back. The finger-pointing has already begun.

Which leaves the Chiefs, who opened the season 5-0 and had the look of a true contender … until, suddenly, the season burst into flames. Kansas City has lost four of its last five, including last week to the hapless Giants, leaving the door open for …

The once-0-and-4 Chargers. As they prepare for the first Thanksgiving day game in team history, the Chargers are stunningly just two games back of the AFC West lead, with a totally manageable schedule ahead. After the Cowboys this week, the only team left on the schedule that’s even sniffing the playoffs is Kansas City. And if the Chiefs’ downward spiral continues, Rivers and Co. are in position to take advantage.

“Obviously (at) 4-6, you could be in a position where you’re way, way out of it,” Rivers said this week. “We’re not way out of the division and not way out of the hunt. That’s exciting and encouraging. It shouldn’t be hard to keep us focused on the task at hand.”

Of course, the Chargers have lost focus in these situations before. But the reality is that it won’t require a perfect effort to make the playoffs, even if the Chiefs turn things around and win the division.

The AFC Wild Card race is a flaming trash heap of below-average teams. The Ravens and TItans are currently in control of the lesser conference’s two Wild Card spots. Both, to put it lightly, are not good. Behind them are the Bills, the Jets, the Texans, the Bengals, and the Dolphins. Not exactly a murderer’s row.

Finish 4-2, like they’ve done the last six weeks, and in this disastrous year for the AFC, the Chargers might clinch a Wild Card spot outright. Six weeks ago, when they were staring down the dark abyss of 0-4, that idea would’ve seemed like pure lunacy.

It did 25 years ago, too. But as that 0-4 team once proved, it’s possible to pull off a miracle. Even for the Chargers.

Ryan Kartje is a sports features reporter, with a special focus on the NFL and college sports. He has worked for the Orange County Register since 2012, when he was hired as UCLA beat writer. His enterprise work on the rise and fall of the daily fantasy sports industry (http://www.ocregister.com/articles/industry-689093-fantasy-daily.html) was honored in 2015 with an Associated Press Sports Editors’ enterprise award in the highest circulation category. His writing has also been honored by the Football Writers Association of America and the U.S. Basketball Writers Association. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Ryan worked for the Bloomington (Ind.) Herald-Times and Fox Sports Wisconsin, before moving out west to live by the beach and eat copious amounts of burritos.

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